[PD] "object" or "class" in pdpedia

[Thomas Grill]

Am 13.09.2007 um 09:06 schrieb Mathieu Bouchard:
>
> It's a concept that they already know since they are very little.  
> Many nouns refer to something that there can be many instances of  
> and of which the noun acts as a class. Thus saying "the cat" refers  
> to an individual, "the cats" refers to several individuals,  
> "cats" (alone) refers to cats in general (class), and so does "all  
> cats" and in another way "any cat" also does.
>

Hmmm, i can follow your reasing, but i guess noone would say "class  
of cats" when he/she means cats in general. That would be "objects"  
for pd then, not "class".

> There must be a way to leverage that kind of intuition or knowledge.
>
>> I tend to think that for pd this differentiation is not really an  
>> issue outside external programming (which isn't targetted in this  
>> discussion).
>
> do you teach abstractions? how do you do that without saying  
> "class"? probably using a word that stands for "class".

For abstractions, the word is "abstraction". An abstraction in turn  
contains objects that may be of type "message", "sub patch",  
"abstraction" or "external/binary object".
I always use "external object" to mean an object that can't be opened  
as a patch. That worked quite well so far, although i'm interested in  
more correct formulations without complicating things.

gr~~~